You're It!
by Arctic Banana
Summary: Scott Ryder accidentally starts a seriously competitive game of Tag that goes on for days and terrorizes the half of the crew that isn't involved. Who will win? Will someone win? Why am I writing a fanfic where Mass Effect characters play Tag at 4am instead of sleeping? The universe will never know.


_So I have a habit of walking around the Tempest and pretending to tag all of the crew members as I walk by them. So far none of them will play along with me though._

* * *

If Scott had known what he was about to unleash that horrible morning, he might not have made the decision that he did. As he walked down the hallway and reached out, touching Peebee's shoulder ever so slightly, he uttered the words that would become forever infamous in the days to come amongst the Tempest crew: "Tag, you're 'It'."

He'd meant it as a joke and not an actual initiation of a game of Tag. It was kind of like how during the days of their childhood, his sister would playfully punch him in the stomach every morning when they crossed paths in the hallway, except the result turned out to be marginally more painful.

As he sat down and ate a bowl of cereal, the moment that would eventually come to be known as 'The Tag Felt Round the Galaxy' already forgotten to him, he remained blissfully unaware of the horror that would span across a week, starting now.

Peebee finished her bagel, calmly chugged the rest of her juice, uttered, "Mmm...that's some good OJ," and then reached across the table, tapped Scott's arm, and stated, "Tag, you're 'It'."

Scott looked back at her like she had just told him that she'd fired his beloved pyjak out of the airlock into the cold void of space and from there, the challenge was born.

He waited outside the bathroom like a vulture and grabbed her arm the second she left. "Tag! You're 'It'!" he shouted before running the other way.

Peebee waited until he was distracted reading his email and snuck up behind him and grabbed him from behind. "Tag! You're 'It'!"

Scott set a trap for her, leaving a package of cookies unguarded on the kitchen table and then running out to tag her the second SAM detected movement on the proximity scanner he had set to wait for her.

Peebee popped out from behind a box and tagged him as he walked by.

Scott sprung out from inside of the box and tagged her as she walked by.

Two hours after the initial tag had started, Scott went back to his room and opened his armor closet to see if he could repair that bullet hole in the left shoulder and was startled when his armor seemingly reached out on its own and shouted. "Tag, you're 'It'! No tag backs!"

"How did you put that on so fast?!" Scott shouted at her. He literally just tagged her two minutes ago.

"How do you move in this?!" Peebee replied back. "I feel like I'm trapped in a garbage can! And the inside of your helmet smells like a new skycar for some reason!"

"Thanks, I just installed a new air freshener," Scott replied. He had a sudden thought occur to him and cursed the fact that he hadn't thought to call a "no tag backs" first. "What now?"

"What do you mean, 'what now'?" Peebee asked.

"I can't tag you back because you said 'no tag backs', so what now?"

"I guess that means I won," she shrugged.

"Uh uh! No way! I am not losing to you, Peebee!" he said. "There's gotta be some way..."

They both stared at each other silently. "Can you please move so I can get out of your closet? I kind of want to take this off now..." Peebee said.

* * *

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Scott said. "Bringing someone else into our game, I mean?"

"Hey, you can just admit defeat and let me have this victory," Peebee replied.

"No way am I doing that! I'm going in!"

He approached Gil as though he were on a mission. Gil paid him no mind and was more fixated on the readings he was getting from the processor he was running a diagnostic on. By the time he realized that Scott was there, the pathfinder was already hovering over his shoulder.

"So Gil, you look a little busy there," Scott stated.

"I am," Gil nodded. "Just making sure the ship doesn't blow up while we're in the middle of space. And I think I just found out where that sandwich your pyjak stole ended up," he said as he noticed a particularly bizarre error message on the readout.

"So if someone were to maybe bother you, you'd be too busy to chase after them, right?" he asked.

"Probably. Depends on if I want to get this finished before my lunch break so I don't have to work through it again."

Scott smiled. "Perfect." He reached out and tapped his shoulder. "Tag, you're it! No tag backs!"

"What the hell?!" Gil shouted, but by the time he turned around, Scott was already gone and shouting, "I'm free!" as he ran. "Okay, that is not cool!" He looked at the pyjak who was waiting for him to finish so he could fish his sandwich back out from inside the processor's protective case. "Hold this!" he said before shoving the datapad, complete with readings, into the pyjak's hands and taking off after Peebee and Scott. "I will not lose to you again, Scott Ryder!" he shouted. "This is for that time you cheated at poker!"

"I thought you said he was busy?!" Peebee said as she ran for her life.

The pyjak stood atop the railing, datapad in hand and a hidden sandwich calling his name. _Why do I always get saddled with the extra work?_ he sighed before he started looking over the readings and tweaking the coding on the processor until the light turned green.

* * *

By day two, Liam had been sucked into the game after Gil grew desperate when both Peebee and Scott managed to evade him for a glorious period of about an hour. By the third day, Drack got pulled in. The events were such a blur that no one even remembered who it was that had initially tagged him, but it was agreed that it had happened sometime after they'd all eaten breakfast while repeatedly tagging each other at the kitchen table while Vetra sighed and tried to pretend they were having a normal breakfast on the Tempest for once.

"Hey Vetra, you want to play?" Scott asked as he leaned towards her. Without even looking up from her meal, she pulled his sidearm from his leg holster and pointed it towards his face, causing him to immediately back the other way towards Gil. "Never mind, guys. She really doesn't want to play."

"Well on that note," Liam said. He reached across the table and gave Scott a hard poke. "Tag, you're 'It'!" he shouted before getting up and running. Everyone else stood up and ran before they could get tagged back.

Scott looked at Vetra, the only one left in the kitchen by then. "I'm gonna go catch them..." he said.

"None of you are touching me until this game is over," she said threateningly.

* * *

It was surprisingly hard to tag someone in such a cramped space, which caused them to go to some creative lengths to do so. Gil hid in the cabinet under the kitchen sink for an hour, just waiting for someone to come by before springing out like a snake from a can and grabbing Liam by the legs while shouting, "Tag!"

Liam then scaled a shelf and waited in hiding before jumping on Drack like a rabid spider monkey, screaming "Tag!" before he ran away.

Drack chased Scott down the hallway and then reached for his legs with a low grab, pulled them out from under him, and yelled, "Tag!" seconds after he landed on his face, and then was out of there before Lexi could leave the medical bay to yell at him for nearly breaking the pathfinder's neck.

Scott learned that day that he could do parkour when his attempts to catch Peebee resulted in him jumping off a crate, running up the side of the wall, and using a door as a springboard to tackle her from the side as she tried to get away. "Tag," he said smugly while she was pinned to the floor underneath him.

Peebee grumbled as everyone ran from her. "Hey Gil?" she said sweetly.

"Nope," he replied before slamming the door shut on the Nomad. The vehicle beeped as he locked the door with himself inside.

"Drack?"

"Uh uh! I am not getting tagged again!" she heard his voice say.

Peebee looked around for him, trying to figure out where the hell his voice had come from before looking up and seeing him grappling overhead from the cargo bay ceiling. "How did you even get up that high?" she asked.

"I have no idea how to even get back down," he admitted.

"Don't look at me," Scott shook his head. "No tag backs."

"Liam, come here a second! I have popsicles!" Peebee shouted at his door.

"I am not leaving this room until you forfeit or I have to go to the bathroom!" Liam replied from the other side.

Peebee sighed and looked around for someone else. Everyone was already in hiding. She looked straight at the only person who hadn't bothered to run. Walking up behind her, she grabbed Cora's butt and said, "Tag, you're 'It'!" before walking away.

Cora glared at her. "I am not playing your stupid game, Peebee," Cora replied.

"Only because you know there's no way you could ever win!" Peebee replied.

"Say what? Oh, you are going to regret saying that when you're all trying to catch _me!"_

Drack fell from the ceiling and landed hard enough to cause everything in the room to bounce upwards an inch. "I found out how to get back down," he said as he caught his breath.

"Run, stupid! Cora's 'It'!" Scott shouted at him as he bolted from the room.

Jaal opened his door and began to step from his room. "Why are you all being so loud..." He watched Cora chase Drack around the cargo room with a vengeance, like a starving varren on a man covered in barbecue sauce, while Peebee cheered her on from the walkway above. "Never mind, I think I'll ask later," he changed his mind before ducking back into his room.

* * *

Vetra just barely glanced at the door when she heard it open before looking back at her book with disinterest. Liam looked around in confusion. "Is Ryder in here?" he asked. "We can't find him anywhere?"

"I haven't seen him," she shook her head.

Liam turned around and started mumbling, "Dammit, I need to tag someone!"

Scott popped out from under his bed and looked towards the door. "Is he gone?!" he asked.

Vetra groaned and looked at her boyfriend in annoyance. "You guys really need to end this game. It's been going on for a week now."

"We can't do that!" Scott replied. "Whoever is 'It' last loses, and no one wants to admit defeat!"

"Then tag each other at the same time and call it a draw or something! I'm tired of trying to sleep only for someone to jump on the bed with us in the middle of the night to tag you while you're vulnerable!"

"The game doesn't work like that, Vetra!" Scott replied. "We already tried that...the rules said only one person could be 'It' at a time."

"Well you need to do something! You've been terrorizing everyone on the ship for seven days! The rest of us kind of want it to stop! Peebee hasn't slept in days so you guys can't catch her unaware and Cora is going mad with power! The other day I tried to use the bathroom and Gil was hiding in there waiting for one of you guys to try to take a pee break so he could tag you! I'm literally losing sleep, and you're hiding under the bed like a night monster!"

"She may have a point, Ryder," SAM added. "Three days into this game that you call 'Tag', I have detected elevated levels of stress in you."

Scott laid back down on the floor, still partially under the bed in case he needed to scramble back under at a moment's notice. "Alright," he gave in. "Maybe I'll call a time out and we'll have a meeting and discuss ending it."

"Thank you," Vetra nodded. "Because if this continues through the night, I'm bunking with Suvi!"

"I've paged them. They've all agreed to meet on the bridge on neutral grounds," SAM replied.

"Okay. Let's get this over with," he sighed before pulling himself out the rest of the way.

* * *

"Okay. So there has got to be a way to end the game that doesn't involve one of us losing!" Scott said. "Maybe we can make the game end on a default. Who can we tag that won't be able to tag us back?"

"The pyjak?" Drack suggested.

"What, are you crazy? He touches everything! Eventually he'll tag one of us back!" Peebee pointed out.

"I can't tag you back, Ryder," SAM suggested. "I don't even have any hands."

"Yeah, but you live in my head, SAM. Wouldn't that make me 'It' by proxy?"

"We could fly somewhere, tag someone, and then jump on the ship and leave before they tag back," Gil suggested.

Kallo spun around in his chair. "I am not flying us somewhere just so you can tag a random stranger and leave!"

"You will if the pathfinder orders you to!" Scott replied.

"Has anyone seen Cora?" Peebee stated.

"Uh…I tagged her just before we started the meeting. Does she know that we called a time out?" Liam asked.

Everyone spun around back to back and searched the room for her. "Cora?" Scott said. "Are you there?"

"This room's a neutral zone, Cora!" Peebee said. "No tagging on the bridge!"

"Did we ever officially declare the bridge a neutral zone in advance, or did we just decide that just now?" Scott asked. Everyone had the same _oh crap_ expression when they realized that they had not.

"Where could she be?" Drack asked.

Gil noticed a squeaking sound. "Does anyone else hear that?" he asked.

All of a sudden the grating to a ceiling vent fell off and Cora, screwdriver in hand, sprung out of it and landed on Drack's back. "TAG! You're 'It'!" she shouted. "NO TAG BACKS!"

"NOOOO!" Drack shouted in despair. "Not again! I was already 'It' three times in the last hour!"

"The krogan is 'It'!" Liam pointed out.

"RUN!" Peebee shouted before they all scattered like cockroaches to get away from him. Cora ran out with her arms overhead, laughing triumphantly, which was the point where Scott realized that she was probably having way too much fun with this game.

The only ones left in the room with Drack were Suvi and Kallo, who, along with Lexi and Vetra, had both thus far managed to avoid getting involved in the game of Tag through various means of intimidation. "If you try to tag us Drack, I swear I will show you what this does!" Kallo warned him with a high powered taser in hand.

* * *

Scott sat, relatively relaxed, at the kitchen table and leisurely drank his chocolate milk. Now that he no longer had to scarf his food and drinks down so he could run before someone caught him and cornered him in the kitchen, he intended to take his time.

Lexi noted the relative calm of the Tempest, a calm that hadn't been experienced in over a week. "Weren't you guys playing Tag?" Lexi asked. "Something about none of you wanting to admit defeat?"

"Neh. We're finished with that game," Scott replied. "Peebee finally found a way to end it where none of us had to be the loser."

"Good. Maybe next time you decide to randomly start a game on a tiny ship, you can play one that doesn't tear the place apart. Have you ever heard of 'Chutes and Ladders'? I think we have a copy of it in storage somewhere."

"We're already planning our next game," Scott replied. "We're leaning towards Krogan Hide and Seek. It's like normal Hide and Seek, except..."

"I don't think I want to know what the 'except' is," Lexi replied.

Just at that moment, Drack com'ed Scott. "Hey Ryder, I found the chainsaw we needed for Hide and Seek!"

"I _really_ don't want to know what the 'except' is," Lexi sighed. "So how did you finish your game?"

* * *

Jaal rushed into Vetra's room panicking like the ship was about to be eaten by Langoliers. "Vetra! Vetra! Quick! I need your help!" he shouted. "Peebee just ran up to me and touched me and said I was 'It' and now no one will go near me! What is 'It'? Is 'It' a disease? Is it fatal? Am I dying? Please tell me I'm not dying! If I die, tell everyone not to touch my things, they might be contagious! I have to go call my family and tell them I love them!"

And with that, he ran back out of the room leaving Vetra alone like it had never happened.

She quickly got Scott on the line. "You know I really hate it when you guys do this kind of stuff to him!" she complained.

* * *

 _I'm way too amused by the idea of Cora uncharacteristically acting like a small child. I'm damn sure she'd go mad with power if someone enticed her enough with the opportunity to stop acting so uppity once in a while._


End file.
